by N J Adel
Every word he said was calculated even the way he addressed me. All designed to get me to like him. To captivate my mind and my heart. It was as if he studied me, my teachings, my person, all his life and came up with the perfect tongue to reach me.
To unlock my guarded doors.
I must say in my past life—perhaps even before I’d become aware of my mistakes and embraced my powers—it would have worked.
Not today.
I resumed my stroll. “What if I do not do that?”
He faltered. “I beg your pardon?”
“What if I do not reclaim the throne of Egypt?”
Dazed, he stared me. “Your Worship…what sick joke is that?”
Redamun’s posture tensed. “Speak properly in the presence of your Queen.”
Hector took a deep breath and squinted at the midday sun. “I apologize.”
I held his gaze. “You are a clever man, Hector. I can tell you have big plans for yourself once I sit on the now Roman throne. But what if I have other plans? More important ones? Would you listen to my wisdom and obey the wishes of your Queen, your Goddess, even if they object to your will?”
A deep grimace distorted his face. “It is my duty to warn Your Worship that if said plans do not include taking back our land from those who occupied it, you shall lose many of your allies, and someone, sooner or later, is bound to betray you.”
“This is not what I asked.”
He swallowed and took a knee. “You will always be my Queen and Goddess, and I shall follow your wisdom with all my heart.”
For the first time since I’d wakened, I could not read a feeling with certainty, and I failed to decide whether he was being truthful. “You’re nothing like your brother.”
He rose to his feet. “Your Worship says that as though it’s unfortunate.”
I smirked. “Not necessarily.”
“If I may ask, what is the nature of the more important plans than reclaiming the usurped throne?”
“Tonight at the feast, you shall have your answer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The air in the atrium was thick and hot on this summer night. A fire torched in the rows of oil lamps on the walls. Yet most of the heat came from the bodies of the guests, jammed in along the benches that every man or woman who lifted a drinking cup poked their neighbor in the ribs.
On my orders, all the children had been put to bed, and the chambers were locked.
Soft music of harps and flutes played in the center, nothing too loud, while the guests’ house boys and girls danced.
The feast began with a lentil soup, followed by a salad of figs, radishes, onions, and leafy greens. Then came the diced salted fish marinated in tomato juice and vinegar. Red and white wine and beer flowed in abundance like the Nile’s flood to wash everything down before the ox tails and honey-glazed ostrich meat arrived.
I sat at the high table with the divine three and Drusus, watching husbands and wives eat from the same plate, drink from the same cup, their kisses and laughter at the intermissions between dishes. Drusus’s family seemed to be the happiest and with the most appetite save Hector. He barely touched his food and merely sipped on his wine.
“Your brother is unamused by this feast?” I asked Drusus.
He stopped chewing on the glazed meat and turned his sight toward Hector. “That catamite.” Drusus swallowed his meat and half rose before I ordered him to sit back.
“You can’t force someone to have fun.”
“But what’s not to enjoy? That ungrateful—”
“Has he shared any concerns with you? Is there something troubling him?”
“He has shared nothing at all with me. Goddess wishes me to ask him?”
“Not now.” More serious matters occupied my mind.
His eyebrows furrowed as he glanced over my plate. “Goddess hasn’t tasted anything either. My brother’s appetite should not affect yours.”
I gave him a warning glare.
“Not that I’m saying it does,” he amended.
“You should eat something, my Queen. You’ll need your strength,” Nur said.
I lifted a silver goblet at him. “It’s not like I’ve run out.”
His cup clinked with mine. “Aiwa.”
“What do you say, my dear friend? Should we replace the dance with a visual story of the Powers of Seratis and the Divine Three?” I took a sip of red wine. “Or should we skip to the bloody ending?”
“I believe a preliminary path to that ending is necessary, Majesty, so not to shock our guests too much.”
“Very well.” I rose to my feet.
Music stopped. Forks and knives dropped, and the room stood with me.
I raised a hand. “Bloods of Ari, you’ve come all the way with lavish offerings to be blessed by your Goddess and to serve her wishes as best as you could. Your dedication will not go unrewarded. And what’s better than justice for a reward? Tonight, the time has come to watch the enemies who have wronged us all receive what they deserve.”
A roar of approval greeted my pronouncement.
“But before that I must prepare you, even warn you, what you are about to see is not for the faint of heart,” I said. “If the sight of magic is too heavy for you, you have your leave to enter your chambers and lock them behind you.”
There were a few laughs and smiling glances, yet no one left.
“And if the sight of blood, even if it is our enemy’s, conflicts you, you are advised to the do the same,” I added.
The gleeful sounds died.
My gaze roamed the quizzical faces and blinks. A few women left their chairs, bowed at me and joined their children. Yet I’d sensed a bunch of men faking their courage to stay.
“No one is going to see you as a coward if you abhor violence. To the contrary, it is a quality I admire in a man,” I said.
Relieved, the bunch of men took their leaves.
“Now we shall begin.” I dismissed the entertainers and nodded at Nur and Drusus. “Bring them.”
In a flash, they jumped and with their landing back brought the sleeping usurper and his priest. I set my goblet aside, joined hands with my guard and handmaid and jumped us three to the center of the hall.
Yelps of shock and fear along with chairs screeching back erupted.
“You call me Goddess and believe my companions are divine. Yet my powers and theirs came from knowledge not from the lights of the gods or the sorceries of the priests,” I assured my guests. “So only fear if you do not believe that within your Goddess lies as well the wisdom to use the knowledge for good and not malice.”
A nod from one encouraged a second and a third like an infectious laugh. And the thudding hearts blossomed as the droplets of sweats dried.
Drusus and Nur sat the two prisoners to their knees and held them for me to wake them, and I did, filling my guests with more awe and curiosity.
Pulling the silk fingers off of my hands, I circled Sekhemre with my steps. The naked, yellow round lump of ghee he was plopped with every restless shift on his knees, his chains locking his hands before him, Drusus locking his shoulders immobile.
“High Priest called my knowledge magic, and I was doomed to a dark end for daring call it by its real name.” I cupped his chin, lifting it to make him meet my eyes. “Tonight, behold as it sends you where all treacherous demons such as you belonged.”
I looked the snake in the eye as it slithered with sweat to my pipes of fear not sound. “When you come face to face with a cobra that could pounce on you before you recognized, what would you do if running was not an option?”
“Kill it!”
“Chop its head off!”
“Death to the snake!”
“Death to the snake!” The words repeated endlessly.
As I let Sekhemre’s slippery chin fall, I nodded at Redamun. “The people have spoken. Death to the snake.”
My guard placed his hands behind his back and stood at attention. “High priest Sekhemre, on the a
uthority of Queen Meha, Daughter of the Sun and the Goddess of Sleep, for your sins of treachery and plotting you are sentenced to a merciless death.”
Then, without pause or hesitation, Redamun fisted the traitor’s chest, wrenching out his heart.
Gasps and names of ancient Gods and new flared in the air as Sekhemre fell to the side, blood staining his lifeless flesh, breath leaving his hollow chest for good.
I hoped.
Bessen Ra’s chest heaved at the heart bleeding at my guard’s hand and the fire balled in the other.
Before the widened eyes, Redamun torched the traitor’s heart to flames and let the ambers fly and fall with the air.
“Meha, you are not a killer. Please.” My brother’s forehead touched my foot. “I beg of you, my Queen, my Goddess, spare me and let me serve you…sister.”
My brows lifted in surprise as my bitter smile mocked him. “Now I’m your Queen, Goddess and sister? Now you remember the blood we share and the right given to me by birth?” I was smiling, but on the inside I was fighting my tears with all the power I had in me. “Now you beg to serve the sister you swore to defile?”
I could see in his eyes when they lifted to mine he was broken. He had led an army. He had been proud. Yet he bowed with tears falling on the foot of the woman he thought he’d defeated. He bore the same expression he had had every time he begged me to hide him from Father and take the beating for him.
Had you always thought I was stronger, little brother? Or had you been using the pure love I had for you? Anything to escape the beating, right?
Some things would never change.
Had you thought I was stronger, you wouldn’t have fought me for my throne. Had you seen me as your blood, you wouldn’t have spilled it for a chair.
From that moment, those bonds that let me have mercy on you had dissolved between us.
“They told me you were evil. Not a goddess but a demon that killed all these men. They warned me if you didn’t name me king, you would kill me too,” he blubbered.
“You’ve just said I’m not a killer.”
“Meha, I’d been wrong. I swear before you all I’d made a mistake. Please, let me atone.”
“They told you Ari would kill you too, and so you tortured his women and children for the formulation?” Drusus scoffed angrily. “Is that why you told your men to kill him even after giving you what you wanted?”
“Yeah!” the guests roared and swore.
“Death to the usurper!”
“Liar!”
“No mercy!”
“Child murderer!”
I raised a hand. “Behold the man I wouldn’t dare name a king. Kings don’t beg and blubber like children and petty thieves. Kings don’t lose their lands.”
The atrium roared again.
I took one last glance at the half-brother, never wishing for something to happen and not to happen at the same time like now.
I’m not like you, Bessen Ra. Our bonds might have dissolved, yet our blood comes from the same spine. I do not know how to remove it from my heart.
Despite everything, I wish the real gods would forgive you and let you in their kingdoms, little brother.
I dragged my moist gaze to Redamun. “The people have spoken.” My heart squeezed, the words to come bitter on my tongue. “Death to the usurper.”
Instantly, my eyes fell back to Bessen Ra as my guard sentenced him.
“One last word if I may,” Bessen Ra requested.
I nodded.
“For your ears only.”
Nur was holding my brother’s shoulders like Drusus had done with the traitor, and his hands were secured as well. Despite Redamun’s head shake, I saw no harm in approaching. Granting a dying man his last wish was an act of mercy I’d like to perform.
Slowly, I lowered my ear close enough for Bessen Ra to whisper.
His snagging breaths sent a shiver down my spine. “I was never…your brother. I was the bastard son of a drunken blacksmith my whore of a mother had cunningly pinned on your divine father. And he believed her because he was desperate for the boy your honorable mother couldn’t give. Live with that, you ugly whore. Your father favored a commoner’s son and named him king over you.”
He retracted before I had straightened, a gloating smirk on his smug face.
My fists clenched so hard my knuckles whitened. The fire blazed red in my cheeks. Yet I wouldn’t allow the man who deceived and threatened and vowed to defile me the pleasure of watching me break and regret every moment I’d loved him for.
I would thank him instead.
I approached this ear this time. “Thank you. If I had any conflict about what I’ve planned for you, thanks to your kind words, it’s gone.”
We would never speak again, and this moment would sustain me from now on.
I rose erect, and with my nod, Redamun gutted the usurper’s heart and torched it to ash.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The usurper’s words were a savage blow to my past. Yet I hadn’t shook.
And as, with my own eyes, I saw his black heart grow back under his bloody ribs, he served me a more savage blow to my hopes. Yet I remained calm.
My companions had heard the shameful secret, and my guests had seen the immortality of their enemy.
What to do next was my decision alone.
“Goddess, the prisoners aren’t dead. Are they immortal like you?” someone asked.
My head rose to the voice, and I saw it belonged to one of the Etays.
The silence I volunteered encouraged someone else to speak. “Even if that’s true, our Queen is the Goddess of Sleep. She must know how to end the usurper immortal or otherwise.”
I listened to the wonders and speculations, to the demands and defenses. To see through the people they called themselves mine. To sift through the lies and half-truths I’d been swimming in all my life.
My focus shifted to Hector, who had remained silent as well, keeping his spirit protected from me. Behind me, I heard the prisoners waking as they had after every trial.
Time to end this night and cross out another line off my list.
I walked by the feast tables. “My beloved guests, since the usurper’s Awaking Day I’ve been asking myself the same question. Is our enemy immortal? For thirteen days and thirteen nights, I’ve been finding ways to kill the bastard and his priest, to clean the world of their dirt. Yet I haven’t found the answer I deem right. For I shan’t accept another but the one I wish. The one we all wish for!”
“Yeah!” The men banged their cups on the tables while the women cheered.
I spun and glared at the prisoners. “I shall not rest or take a throne until I deliver their unholy souls to Anubis himself. May they find no guidance in the underworld.” Penetrating their heads, I put Bessen Ra and Sekhemre back to sleep.
I twisted and stared at Hector as the cheers and roars rose higher. “This is my purpose on this earth, to eradicate the evil that blatantly lived among us so there will be peace and not war! So we can live without fear of the traitors poison! So there will be no more children dying in any of our names!” I centered the atrium. “The nature of my plans has been revealed, Aris. Who is with me?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“An Inspiring demonstration of power, and an inspiring speech you gave, Your Worship.” Hector came forth through the back garden where I sat on my stargazing bed, Tia and Redamun flanking me.
“What’s truly inspiring is the amount of support, love and obedience I received from your family,” I said, the scent of cloves and honey he wore filling my nostrils. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping like the rest?”
The silver light danced in his eyes as he reached me. “I’d like a word with Your Worship, if she may.”
“Speak.”
He hesitated, his gaze flickering at my companions.
“Even if I order them away, which I won’t do, they can still hear you.” I pointed at my ear. “Divine hearing.”
A wry smile appe
ared on his mouth. “Divine? That you bestowed on them, Goddess Seratis?”
So you truly don’t believe in the human divinity farce? I might start liking you more now? “You may say so.”
It was my creation after all that made them what they’d become.
“So all Ari’s teachings about Queen Meha were false? How your blood runs pure from noble kings and queens, not the divine myth only found in story and song. How you rejected the false divinity cloak under which ancient rulers hid. All these were not true?”
“No, they are. But I see divinity from a different perspective now. I do not have to descend from real gods to be one. If I possess their powers, I can retain the title.”
“What of your original title that has been usurped? Why the great Goddess of Sleep cannot be Queen Meha of Egypt at the same time?”
“Are you questioning my decisions, young Hector the Architect?” I warned.
“I’d be damned if I did,” he said with passion. “All I ask for is a chance to make me see what you see.”
“Does it mean you’re like the Etays? You need to see before you belive?”
“Your Worship knows it’s not that. I’ve believed in you all my life.”
“Yet your sight is short, and you’re impatient. All you must do is trust in me and follow until the wisdom is unraveled. There are many things you do not know.”
He stepped forward. “Like why my brother hasn’t laid a hand on me since I arrived here? Like the apprehension that crosses Your Worship’s eyes every time you see a child? Like the gloves with which all five of you are protecting your hands? Or is it not your hands you are protecting?”
I raked him from head to toe, the energy he carried manipulative. Every time I was close to this person, my mind was set like a war horn, yet my body behaved like a sunflower to sunshine. “You are a very clever man, young Hector the Architect.”
